One of the wonders of our age is the persistence of "birthers" and other true believers who insist that Barack Obama is an Islamist terrorist mole bent on destroying America, but this flight from reality isn't only a problem on the right.

We're told that the court's docket is dominated by civil rights issues, but the justices have one major bit of unfinished business that's getting almost no attention, and deserves plenty: the court's own ethics.

As President Bill Clinton famously said, "Democrats want to fall in love; Republicans want to fall in line." Today, for their values, their Justices and their post-Romney ambitions, Republicans are falling in line for Todd Akin.

If Jefferson is going to be conscripted posthumously to any side in the debate over Citizens United, the Sage of Monticello belongs with the vast majority of Americans who reject the Court's decision to treat CEOs spending corporate money on political campaigns as a form of citizen speech.

This decision, made over 225 years ago when monarchies were the main form of government, was, for the most part, due to the fear that politics would play too much of a role if the judges had to worry about losing their jobs under the king. I wonder what they'd say today.